


goodnight, travel well

by Overdressedtokill (SkyeStan)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5405006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyeStan/pseuds/Overdressedtokill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>grant ward is dead. and he's not coming back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	goodnight, travel well

**Author's Note:**

> so. this is a bit of an odd fic. because you know i don't really pay attention to canon anymore. but i guess there was a piece of me that kind of did? so this is really about me mourning grant as well. and letting that last shoe drop, so to speak. i think this is a farewell, in a lot of ways. this is an ao3 exclusive. goodnight. travel well.

Her mouth tastes like pennies.

This is nothing new. She lays awake at night and licks the cracks of her lower lip. She should put balm over it, at some point. Take care of herself. Go to sleep.

It’s hard for her to find the point.

At some point, she asks him. She looks him dead in the eye, and she asks. “Do you feel any better?”

He glances down at his hand. Flexes it, like he’s considering it. She knows he isn’t. She knows the answer. “No.”

“Did you, while you were doing it?”

“No.”

She swallows. “How could you?”

She doesn’t expect a reply. Which is good, because she doesn’t get one.

 

 

Grant Ward is dead.

He has been dead for two weeks, and it’s a funny kind of loss.

She thinks it’s a long time coming. She thinks he deserved it.

She thinks he must be happier, this way. He has to be.

And then, of course, there’s the overwhelming sense that this is wrong. That she’s gotten her dates messed up. He’s only a country away, and this is all a game.

She couldn’t kill him, after all. She remembers trying. Wanting. Relief.

Shame.

How could he take this from her? How could he decide he deserved to kill Grant more?

It’s... pathetic. A sort of twisted masculinity that disgusts her. A person she never wanted to work under.

But she’s trapped. All of a sudden, she’s trapped. And Grant Ward is dead.

 

 

When she can sleep, she wakes in the middle of the night. Panting, sweating, a weight wedged against her chest.

She gasps for breath. Pulls at her sheets. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s okay. I’m alive. I’m alive.”

This is becoming less true.

Sometimes, she dreams it’s her heart being crushed instead. That it’s Grant on the other end. And when she looks him in the eye, she sees nothing at all. Just blackness.

 

 

“Can you hear me?” she asks, in the dark of the night. Like a prayer. “You’re not really dead, are you? You can’t be.”

This is what she wanted. This is what she wants.

Right?

He’s gone. He’s dead and gone and she’s free!

She’s never been less free in her life. They may as well shackle her to this place.

“If you’re alive,” she says. “Come find me. Okay? I’ll wait. I promise I’ll wait.”

 

 

She doesn’t always hold true. Two weeks turn to a month, and she still sits on the fence. Happy. Unhappy. She knows the truth, deep in her soul. But it’s easy enough to ignore.

She holds someone else’s hand. Kisses him with a grin under her lips. And she thinks she could mean it.

Because Grant Ward is dead.

And he’s not coming back.

She tugs on the short ends of her hair, and studies her reflection. “Grant Ward is dead,” she says. “Grant Ward is dead and gone.”

A figure moves behind her, and she jolts.

But when she turns, hand raised to fire-

There’s no one there.

 

 

At some point, she scribble a eulogy on a napkin. A paper one, in the back of a diner. It makes her feel like a beatnik, like an artist. Like the person she’d wanted to be, so long ago.

But she’s just a SHIELD agent. She’s just a drone. She couldn’t cry, even if she remembered how. 

So she writes his name on a paper napkin, with a ball-point pen. And scribbles nothingness after that.

She balls it up and shoves it into her pocket.

She promises herself she’ll forget.

It stays tucked in a notebook. Under her bed.

 

 

The world moves forward. The sun still comes out, though she’s not usually outside to see it.

She doesn’t cut her hair.

They tell her Hydra’s coming back. They tell her darker times are coming.

She laughs. At the most inopportune time, she curls her lips into a grin and laughs.

Darker for whom? For her?

She’s already in the dark ages. She’s at the bottom of the lake, with mud in her lungs.

They’re all so scared. They’ve always been scared, she realizes.

And for a long time, she was, too. That’s how this happens, she thinks. That’s how she got here.

But she’s not afraid anymore. Not of anything or anyone. Not ever again.

 

There’s a picture of him from a satellite. She thinks it’s a mistake.

A glitch.

There’s that phantom pain in her chest, again. The sensation of someone over her shoulder.

They stand around and stare at it, lips all drawn in the same kind of line. A uniformity that she hates.

She breathes. “It’s not him. He’s dead.”

Stares.

She continues. “This must be a trick. They’re trying to mess with us. But he’s gone. You killed him yourself. He died.”

She lets the dread in. The shame. The memory of it, the reversal of fortune.

She could stop. But she won’t. “So whatever this is, whatever trick they’re playing. We don’t fall for it. We keep going.”

They agree.

And she’s glad.

She’s full of shit.

 

 

They meet eventually. Of course they do. It’s inevitable.

He holds her by the throat. Presses her against the stone wall.

He was gone. He was gone forever but he’s here. And he’s real. Paler and thinner, with something crawling behind his eyes.

She grabs his wrist.

“Did you miss me?” he asks.

Her hair is long again. He never saw it short.

He hasn’t really put pressure on her. It hurts, but it’s not suffocating.

She gets the feeling he’s playing with his food.

She gets the feeling that Grant Ward is dead.

“It’s alright,” he says. “I wouldn’t want you to lie to me, anyway.”

She tries to swallow. Tries. She wouldn’t lie. She couldn’t.

His thumb brushes her jaw.

“You know I’m not him.”

She says nothing.

“I have his memories. But not the emotions attached to them.”

She focuses on that slithering... thing. It’s making her ill. The way it moves across him, like it owns him.

She knows, with a sinking certainty, that it does.

“He thought of you, when he was dying.”

Finally, she glares. “Shut up.”

A grin. Crooked and certain and cold. “He wanted you to be happy.”

“You-”

“But like I said. I don’t feel what he felt.” He studies her face for a moment. “I couldn’t care less about your happiness.”

“Because Grant Ward is dead,” she says. So softly, she thinks he won’t hear it.

He does. And for a moment, he seems pleased. “Dead and gone,” he tells her. “Would you like to see what came back?”

The overwhelming loss almost swallows her whole. The finality of it. That once this is gone, he will be gone for good.

She will have lost him more times than she cares to count.

She will have never had him to begin with.

And all she’s got now are her fingers, pressed to his wrist. His fingers around her throat. His body. The feeling of his skin.

But not him. He’s _gone_.

“Let me go.”

“What was so fascinating about you?” he asks, ignoring her demand. “Why did he care about you so much? You’re just a girl.”

She can’t meet his gaze. “I don’t know.”

And that’s the truth of it. That she is inhuman, that she is a genius, that she is beautiful. But she has never understood that sort of awe.

Maybe she should have tried to.

He releases her throat. “More honest than he thought.”

“What?”

“You were quite the liar,” Grant’s body says. “I remember.”

It presses against her teeth. What did I lie about? What did he think was a lie?

But she smothers it.

She should run. This is unexpected and wrong. This is some volatile beast. It could lash out at any moment.

But it’s Grant, after months of him being dead.

He still is. _He still is._

“What else do you remember?”

He blinks down at her, and his eyes are as dark as she’d dreamed. “That’s not your concern.”

“Grant-”

“I’m not Grant Ward. He’s long dead.”

The sensation of tears. The weight in her cheeks, tugging downwards as she holds them back. “I know.”

“You didn’t love him. He knew that. Don’t look so pitiful.” It’s almost funny. That he’s scolding her. Like Grant used to. Forever ago.

She doesn’t want to think about what he’s saying. About the questions he’s just answered. That’s the lie. That’s what he’d thought she’d lied about.

“You don’t know the first thing about me.”

He takes a lock of her hair between his fingers. Like he’s studying it. Like this is all one big experiment for his amusement. 

She should run. She needs to run. “No. I guess I don’t,” he says.  “Everything I know about you is preserved behind glass. His most cherished keepsake.”

“Stop.”

He drops her hair. “You’re wondering if you can bring him back. Because seeing me, seeing his body, gives you some twisted sense of hope. But you know the truth. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And what is that?”

“You’re not him.”

He stares at her with an expression that is so entirely Grant. So falsely genuine. So familiar that it aches.

She could pretend.

Even as the thing, the controller, squirms beneath. She could pretend.

That’s all she’s been doing, anyway.

“What am I?”

She balls her hands into fists. “Not him,” she repeats.

“Good.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“He’s never coming back.”

He clicks his tongue. “Not ever.”

Its kindness is unsettling. Almost akin to what she remembers.

She realizes that’s all it is. A recording. A loop. An echo of the real thing.

“Please,” she says. “Just let me say goodbye.”

She doesn’t know where the words came from. Where they’ve gone, now that they’ve been said.

What was Grant tilts its head. “You can’t. There’s nothing left.”

“Not even a piece of him?”

“No.”

She feels as though she’s being lied to. “He’d want me to say goodbye.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“You want me to run, don’t you?”

The thing looks at her with Grant’s eyes. “Yes. And tell all of them what I am.”

Which is death. Which is a memory. Which is-

Nothing. He’s nothing that ever was or ever will be. He’s not Grant Ward.

“Kind of dramatic.”

He gestures. “So be it.”

“And if I refuse to leave?” she says. “If I just stand here, demanding answers?”

One long, pointed slither. Across his forehead. “You’ll get none.”

“Will you kill me?”

“Yes.”

“I can take you.”

“You can’t.”

She wishes she could. She wishes she could pound her fists against his chest until his heart started again. Until the light turned back on.

That’s not how this works.

She meets his eyes. “Goodbye, Grant Ward.”

There is nothing there. But the thing with his face is kind enough to nod. “Goodbye, Skye.”

She doesn’t correct him. She doesn’t have to.

 

 

She uncovers her eulogy. Mostly smudged to ruin. But she remembers what’s been written, what she’d scribbled out in a hurry to the finish line.

“I’m sorry you were alone,” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder for you.”

There’s more. There’s a lot more. But she’s crying too hard to speak.

She hasn’t cried in months. Months and months.

And now, she’s not sure she’ll ever stop.

 

 


End file.
